


Those Words, That Kiss, That Bottle

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: 2003, Be My Peterick Valentine 2019, Fluff, Humour, M/M, Magic, Valentine's Day, Van Days, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 08:02:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17783624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: Pete buys a love potion. Patrick mistakes it for an energy drink.It's probably for the best that love potions aren't real.





	Those Words, That Kiss, That Bottle

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so, another holiday, another Peterick collection and here's my contribution for Be My Peterick Valentine 2019! I hope you guys enjoy it. Hey, who knows, maybe one day I'll stop writing Van Days trash and let the boys grow up.
> 
> I mean, I doubt it, but you never know!
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/168268289@N03/47093875841/in/dateposted-public/)

“You probably shouldn’t touch that.”

On this subject, Pete and the owner of the tiny, dusty, new-age healing store are completely in agreement. This is because _that_ is a delicate glass bottle. It’s beautiful. It’s fragile. The stuff inside of it is soft, first kiss pink and swirled with amethyst and silver. It looks, to put not too fine a point on it, both breakable _and_ expensive. Pete probably shouldn’t touch _anything_ that can crack, smash, split or shatter if dropped from any particular height. But just because Pete _knows_ he shouldn’t touch it, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t _want_ to touch it.

The fact that he’s even _in_ a tiny, dusty new-age healing store in the first place is kind of a funny story. By which he means it’s not funny at all but that’s what people say, right? He supposes, if he was given to outbursts of poetic conjecture (which he absolutely is) that finding himself here at all is serendipitous. A twist of fate. If he was feeling more down to earth, he’d just say the van broke down and he’d rather be in here than out there, helping to change the flat tire with no proper equipment or prior training when it’s twenty below. Oh, come on. He’ll buy them all hot chocolate — he checks his wallet, okay, black coffee, one cup between them — to make up for it.

But, back to the bottle. He _wants_ to touch it, more than he wants to draw his next breath. It’s shiny, you see. Glittery. _Pretty_.

Pete Wentz is convinced that there’s at least a little corvid blood in his veins. Not that he’s submitted to formal testing yet but like, once the band is making some serious cash then it’s the first thing on his list. Half magpie, half mage, half marauding warrior. They’re going to pay _him_ for the privilege of touching his A-positive. Yes, he knows the fractions don’t add up but that’s because, Pete is sure, his lineage contains _way_ too much myth, magic and _awesome_ to cram into one equation. That and he’s awful at math. And also, biology. Wait, what was his point?

Oh yes. The bottle.

To assist in the resistance of temptation — something Pete is demonstrably terrible at applying — he shoves his hands down into his hoodie pockets. He immediately yanks them back _out_ when he encounters the lingering ten-percent of Tuesday’s fish taco. It’s now Sunday. He should make a concentrated effort to do laundry _way_ more frequently than he currently does, that’s what a rational grownup would do. He knows he won’t. The guy behind the counter is watching him closely enough that he’s forced to reconsider his initial instinct to wipe away the residue on a nearby kaftan and, instead, resorts to the seat of his jeans. Everyone knows jeans look better unwashed.

He goes back to staring at the bottle, sitting amongst its bottle brethren. Pete is a goddamn literal wizard at this stuff, he’d like to bet he can guess exactly what that pink stuff is supposed to do and opens his mouth to do just that. “This is a potion to make your crush notice you, right?”

It has to be. It’s that shade of pink that makes Pete think of crushing on someone. It’s the same color as Patrick’s lips and Pete’s been crushing on _him_ since it became legal for him to think of Patrick as a sexual entity and not a tiny, defenseless child for whom Pete would die. Plus, it’s right next to a display of massage oil decorated with a pink cardboard heart with ‘Valentine’s Special 50% Off!!!’ etched in red Sharpie. For the non-denominational incense user in your life.

Pete waits for the clerk to express an appropriate level of astonishment at his superior potion identification skills.

Instead, the guy snickers unkindly, “It’s rose hip and juniper, my dude. You put it in an oil burner.” This man is a douche and Pete is not taken by his customer service skills at all. Then he pauses, head cocked, and considers Pete carefully. “But, like, do you… _need_ something like that?”

“You mean, uh, a _love potion_?” If this guy wants to be an asshole, so can Pete. Pete is a black belt, tenth dan in asshattery. Pete can drag this guy down and beat him to _death_ at this game. “Just so we’re absolutely, one hundred and ten percent clear. You’re offering me, a citizen of 2002, a grown man with like, a tax return with his name on it, a driver’s license valid in… _most_ states and basically a whole college degree in a science subject,” he does not add that the science in question is _political_ , and finishes dramatically, “a love _potion_.”

If he’s impressed by Pete’s rapier wit, he doesn’t show it.

“Whatever dude, you’re the one in a magic store four days before Valentine’s looking at things you think are gonna make your crush notice you.” He picks his comic book up once more; Pete is not a fan of his tone, he’s even less taken by the way the dude gives him the once over with a sneer. “Seems to me like maybe you need a little help in that, uh, _area_.”

Is this guy throwing shade on Pete’s _dick_? The jeans don’t exactly emphasize anything. Pete has nothing to be ashamed of.

“My crushes notice me!” Pete declares, because they _do_ , they _do_ notice him. Okay, aside from one crush in particular but, like, Pete is pretty certain that’s because Patrick sees him as nothing more than an anatomically smooth Ken doll below the waist, _not_ because Pete is the kind of romantically repellent loser that requires the assistance of a dude who smells of patchouli and loneliness. “I have no known issues with attracting the attention of my crushes.”

“ _Right_ ,” says the clerk, without looking up. “See you later, then.”

“Yeah, good day to _you_ , asshole,” Pete adds the last word very quietly and has his hand around the door handle before he pauses, “Listen, like, hypothetically? If I wanted one of those, uh, things — for a crush? That I totally don’t need, by the way. Uh... where would I find it?”

“ _Hypothetically_ , they’d be on the top shelf, above the healing crystals,” he waves a sarcastic hand and gives a sarcastic smile, like a big, sarcastic asshole, “do you need my help reaching?”

Pete absolutely does but will dislocate his shoulder before he admits it. He strains, gropes and nearly crashes through the shelf. Then, he exchanges his dignity for something that looks a lot like a miniature Gatorade bottle. Really, they should up their game because the oil burner stuff looks _rad_ and this looks like something Pete might chug to combat insomnia. He places it down on the counter with as much dignity as he can muster. It turns out that is a woefully small amount.

“You own it now, it’s _yours_ , whoever drinks it? They become yours, too,” the clerk says solemnly, as if he’s imparting some strange and mystical wisdom passed down through the ages. Pete touches the bottle and feels like they’re sharing chakras or winding together the ancient, old-oak parts of their souls. Then he continues, like this is Target and Pete is buying Doritos. “That’ll be $11.95. Do you have a loyalty card?”

Pete hands over a ten and two sweaty singles in silence. He does not wait for his nickel.

*

“I’ve been electrocuted,” says Patrick, auto-tuned by the sound of the van’s tires humming over the dark gray ribbon of highway. “More specifically, _you_ electrocuted me.”

Patrick is shaking his hand like he can throw the pins and needles fuzziness of it directly at Pete. To be fair, he should have realized that Pete was yanking his chain when he told him to touch the wire poking from the back of the aftermarket tape deck they’ve jammed into the van. Patrick’s naiveté is charming, really.

“Technically, it was an electric _shock_ ,” Pete is very good with technicalities, _a_ fact his college professors will confirm, “It’s only _electrocution_ if you die. Same with drowning, which is a fun fact.”

Joe frowns in the back seat. He smells of weed and spilt yoghurt and has been strategically sited by Andy between Pete and Patrick to prevent an incident. Pete prods a tender bruise on his cheekbone and clarifies — to prevent _another_ incident. “Drowning is only electrocution if you die?”

“I dunno, ask Patrick. He’s the one who touches live wires.”

“You know what? Fuck you—”

“Oh God,” Andy says from the driver’s seat to Pete’s left. He’s wearing an expression that suggests that, if he weren’t currently driving and, if the consequences didn’t involve tearful mothers on local news, he would climb out of the moving van right now and leave them to their fate. But he is, so he can’t and instead, he shoves up his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose very tightly. “Remind me _why_ I agreed to this?”

Pete pauses in his game of firing super sour skittles directly at Patrick’s increasingly furious face (framed with amusingly staticky hair from the electric shock that was not, _technically,_ electrocution) and looks up, “I keep telling you. Because we’re going to be awesome. Because Patrick here is basically constructed entirely of melodies, sunbeams and unicorn farts.” Patrick throws a shoe at him. Fortunately, Patrick is not constructed of athleticism and good aim and so it thumps off the windshield and bounces into the footwell. “And you, Hurlmeister, have been let in on the ground floor.”

With that, Pete tosses the shoe out of the window and laughs as Patrick screams, “That was my fucking _shoe_ , asshole! Who throws someone’s _shoe_?”

“You threw it first. Let he who is without sin cast the first Converse.”

“You’re not without sin, motherfucker, you’re just without functioning brain cells. Get me. My fucking. _Shoe_.”

“You threw his _shoe_?” Joe chimes in lazily. He sounds like he’s completing a verbal dot-to-dot with no pencil. “Not cool, man, now he has to hop. He can’t hop on stage. Hey, you should, like, give him _your_ shoe.”

“I don’t _want_ his fucking shoe! He probably has pubic lice of the foot. _Shoebic_ lice!” Patrick snarls like a dog. Pete throws another skittle and hits him square between the eyes. This puts into place a chain reaction of events that starts with Patrick launching himself to the back of the front seat and ends with him slithering across the gear shift and knocking the van into park. It’s like scientific _poetry_.

_“Knock it off!”_

The van slews up onto the shoulder. They’re all, with the exception of a furious Andy, thrown towards the windshield as he steps on the brake. That this is because Andy is the only one wearing his seatbelt is neither here nor there. Patrick winds up curled on Pete’s lap which is doing nothing for Pete’s cortical function. Or vascular system which is also, conveniently, heading straight for his lap.

Pete grins at him and says with absolute sincerity, “Hey there, beautiful. If you wanted to give me a lap dance, all you had to do was ask.”

The punch Patrick throws isn’t friendly. “Fuck you.”

“Say please.”

“I will stop for the shoe,” says Andy quietly, in the tone used by parents when they’re on the verge of ‘turning this car around _right now_ and heading _straight back to Winnipeg_ ’, “But I will _not_ back up and I will _not_ help you find it.”

In the hope of appearing pathetic and puppy-like, Pete widens his eyes and whimpers, “But it’s _snowing_.”

“That’s something that tends to happen in North Dakota in February,” Andy clearly _hates_ puppies, Pete should’ve known better than to trust a man who doesn’t like puppies, “You have one minute to locate Patrick’s shoe. If you’re not back in the van, I’ll leave you here, don’t think I won’t.”

“But—”

“ _Now_.”

Although it’s tempting to tip Patrick into the nearest snowdrift on his way out of the van, Pete resists the urge. This is a standing testament to his character because if he _did_ , there’s every possibility Patrick would run the risk of contracting hypothermia. Should Patrick succumb, then Pete would be left with literally no option but to wrestle him into a sleeping bag and let medicinal body heat do the hard work. Pole to pole. He hears that works best. That Pete resists this possibility is a modern-day miracle. _Reverend, may I present the case for my immortal soul — today, I did not attempt to turn my friend into a human popsicle even though I conceivably could’ve absorbed the drips with my mouth. Can I get an amen?_

It turns out, it’s difficult to locate one size ten All Star in a force five blizzard. By the time he climbs back into the van — shivering and clutching a shoe so stiff with ice he could use it as a murder weapon and never be caught when it thaws out — his eyelids have frozen. He never took the time to really appreciate the ability to blink until it’s cruelly stolen from him.

“Okay, I’ve got your—”

Patrick is bent over Pete’s bag. Pete can, somehow, make this out through the way his eyelashes have set like they’ve been blasted with liquid nitrogen. Patrick is on his knees, shoulder deep in the guts of Pete’s duffel but, instead of yanking free a baby calf like The Incredible Doctor Pol, he’s clutching a tiny plastic bottle.

A tiny _empty_ plastic bottle.

If this were a movie of Pete’s life, it would be sound tracked by Blink-182 and right now would be the moment the frame freezes with a record scratch and his voice through the speakers. _So, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I accidentally fed my best friend a love potion._ There would follow ninety minutes of wacky shenanigans and everyone would leave the theater feeling stupider and cheated out of their ten bucks. Instead, this is real and it’s sound tracked by N*SYNC (because there are no winners when Pete is left in charge of the tape player) and Pete’s heart becoming arrhythmic and Pete wants to _die_.

“What the fuck did you just drink?” he shrieks, hitting an octave only previously known to dogs and particularly operatic dolphins. “Who goes through another dude’s bag and just _drinks_ what he finds? Do you know how dangerous that is?”

Patrick swallows, panicked, “I don’t know! What the fuck _did_ I just drink? It’s just — it’s one of those energy shots, isn’t it?”

“What _dangerous_ liquids do you carry in your bag in tiny Gatorade bottles?” Andy asks, curious. He appears to give this some further thought and then grimaces. “On second thoughts, never tell me.”

Patrick, moving with all of the improbable grace, force and speed of a T-1000, powers across the back of the van and grabs Pete by the neck. “What the _fuck_ did I just drink? Do I need to visit the ER? Is my mom going to kill you? God, I hope my mom is going to kill you.”

“Ack,” says Pete as he tries to breathe in around the Jackie Chan grip Patrick has on the neck of his shirt, the fabric biting into his tender, delicate windpipe, “ _Ackackackack_!”

Patrick releases his hold by maybe an eighth of an inch. Pete sucks in a breath and uses his subsequent choking fit to think about his best plan moving forward. Unfortunately, the lack of oxygenated blood makes him honest and he blurts out the truth: “Love potion.”

“Is that some kind of euphemism?” Patrick asks, horrified, dropping Pete like he’s covered in something unpleasant. Well, the remnants of the fish taco are still on the seat of his pants so he supposes, technically, he _is_. “What the fuck do you _mean_ , love potion?”

At this, Pete hesitates. Lightheadedness lent him honesty, but it seems it hasn’t granted him courage. It’s impossible to spit the words between them, to confess that he was, _is_ , so desperate for Patrick to notice him that he’ll sacrifice his last ten-dollar bill in an attempt to garner affection via the medium of a small bottle of dark red syrup. Syrup that looks, and smells, an awful lot like cherry NyQuil, now he’s thinking about it. Oh well, if Patrick’s knocked unconscious, at least it will excuse him from this conversation for a couple of hours.

He waits a beat in the hope Patrick will pass out. Instead, Patrick continues to blink at him.

“Oh, unwad your panties, lunchbox. It was just a stupid thing I picked up in a store someplace.”

Hands still fisted in the front of Pete’s t-shirt, warm breath close, Patrick mutters, “You — you bought a love potion? Who do you want — who was it for?”

_You,_ Pete thinks desperately. He doesn’t say that out loud, because he’s no longer lightheaded and is in full and frank control of his faculties, _thank you very much_.

“Some girl,” Pete lies effortlessly. Pete is good at lying and, most importantly, has already begun to pull together his rubber band ball of lies. There are enough _some girls_ , enough broken hearts and numbers scrawled in eyeliner on ticket stubs that it sounds believable. “It’s probably just cough syrup, anyway.”

The change in Patrick is immediate and curious. His eyes dull, his jaw tightens. He tilts his chin with all the defiance of a young Marlon Brando and snarls a choked-off laugh.

“ _Probably?_ ” Patrick sneers, considering the bottle and tossing it back into Pete’s bag. “ _Of course_ it’s not fucking magic, dipshit. Consider me drinking it an exercise in saving you from your own shitty romantic gestures. I just spared you the embarrassment.”

Honestly? That was way harsher than it needed to be. Pete is many things; an idiot, a poet, a master manipulator and the only person he knows who can inflate a condom over his head until it bursts without passing out from oxygen deprivation. But he’s not stupid. What was he going to do? Hand over the bottle like a wilted corsage on prom night: _Patrick Stump, would you do me the honor of swallowing my love potion?_

Actually, that _totally_ sounds like something he’d say.

Andy fires the van and they return to their seats. Pete switches the cassette for some Costello in a silent act of contrition for a crime he’s not sure he committed in the first place. It’s pointless, Patrick pulls on his headphones and cranks up his Discman, staring at the endless white beyond the I-80. He watches Patrick sadly until the light fades and they’re in the shutter stop dark-then-gold of the streetlights that pick their way along the center of the interstate. Patrick doesn’t look at him once.

“I dunno,” says Joe thoughtfully, the first noise anyone has made in over an hour. It makes Pete jump. “I mean, who’s to say that love potion _won’t_ work? Then what?”

“It was fucking NyQuil,” Pete gestures to their now-unconscious lead singer. He’s snoring heavily, real, rattle-your-bones sleep apnea and there’s a small puddle of pink drool on the shoulder of his denim jacket. He has never looked more adorable. Pete lies like a lying thing with a carefully crafted lying machine. “And anyway, it wasn’t _for him_. So, that means it wouldn’t work.”

“Oh yeah,” Joe nods dreamily. “Some girl, right?”

“Right. And it’s _cough syrup._ I feel like I can’t stress that enough. Potions aren’t _real_.”

Eyes on the road up ahead, Andy shakes his head and says, like a low-budget Yoda, “Forces of the universe are powerful. Who knows what you created?”

“Well, it won’t work, will it? Because I’m not in love with Patrick, am I? And, for the final time, this isn’t Harry Potter and I didn’t just Patriddikulus our singer, _okay_?”

“Sure you’re not,” Andy smiles unpleasantly at the tail lights up ahead, “you keep telling yourself that.”

Pete could say many things. He could point out that he’s not gay — as long as having regular alone-time fantasies about one dude in particular doesn’t count as gay. Pete’s close to certain that it’s at least a _little_ gay to masturbate over your very male best friend, but that’s okay. Who needs labels? He could also reiterate his earlier lie that he bought it for ‘some girl’. He could change the subject or put Christina Aguilera on the tape deck to incite a war. Instead, he rests his head against the window and pretends to sleep.

Everything will be fine in the morning.

***

Patrick wakes up sweaty (which isn’t unusual) and clinging to the remnants of a dream in which someone with wide lips and a sharp, toothy smile was kissing him silly behind the amps in a dark corner of a packed-out basement (which _is_ unusual, but not unwelcome). The dream fades, drifting away on that first exhale, slippery as silk threads. So, he stares at the inside of his eyelids and thinks warm, content thoughts about kissing Pete.

Wait, what?

He’s struggling to process that thought and link it to the sleepy warmth of his morning erection, pitched magnificently beneath his jeans. Before he can locate the dots and an internal, metaphorical pen with which to join them, the rolled up sleeping bag between his thighs does three disconcerting things.

  1. It moves;
  2. It stops feeling like a sleeping bag;
  3. It turns out it’s actually Pete’s thigh.



His first instinct is to say _speak of the devil_ , which would be spectacularly embarrassing because then he’d have to admit to having dreams about Pete. Fortunately, it comes out as _nnghmrph_ , which is vague enough that Pete doesn’t ask any questions. The dream, the kissing Pete thoughts, the boner, the thigh, they all come together in a glorious, early morning cacophony of sensation that culminates in Pete’s sour morning breath on his face as he says, “Morning, Patty. I see you’re in the key of D major.”

A dick-themed music pun. Nice.

“This is a completely normal biological response for a young adult male at my stage of development,” Patrick rasps, more eloquently than he could’ve hoped for. It’s super hard to get embarrassed about popping wood when you live in a van with three other dudes. Random erections are like farts — it’s probably not healthy to hold them in for too long. “It’s totally natural. _Healthy_ , even.”

None of this usually stops Pete from singing _Rick’s got a boner_ to the tune of _We Are the Champions_ but, this morning, he doesn’t. Instead, disconcertingly, he pats Patrick gently on the top of his fluffy bedhead and says, “Sleep well?”

Actually, Patrick _did._ “Yeah, _really_ well. I had this weird dream, though. But, uh, nothing is as boring as other people’s dreams, am I right? That’s what John Green said, anyway. Ha ha ha!” Patrick laughs, big and bright and false. There’s a weird itch in his veins, like someone drained out his blood and replaced it with shook up cans of Mountain Dew. He rubs his prickling thumb along the seam of his jeans and wills away his erection and the lingering warmth of Pete’s dream-mouth. “Weird how I just blacked out, though.”

“Yeah, one minute you were in the room then _poof!”_ Pete makes the universally accepted _poof_ hand gesture and ends on a finger waggle before continuing in a passable impression of contrition. “I’m sorry you were knocked unconscious by my twelve-dollar cough syrup.”

_Twelve dollars_? Band cash is basically measured on the same scale as dog years. Patrick is forced to deal with the guilt that he chugged the touring band equivalent of a Faberge egg like it was a Jell-O shot.

“Oh.” There’s a sharp, stabbing pain in Patrick’s chest when he imagines Pete buying that bottle with _some girl_ in mind. Intense, burning sensation at the realization that Pete stood in a store, considered his wallet and decided _yep, pussy over pizza,_ and handed over twelve bucks in exchange for a cheap pickup line. The pain is probably something normal, like a heart attack, definitely nothing weird, like jealousy. Should that be comforting or concerning? He pokes his left arm and tries to figure out if it’s spreading or if that’s just pins and needles. “I mean, bummer that it got wasted. We still have the bottle? Maybe I could buy some more.”

“You don’t—”

It sounds suspiciously like he’s offering to assist Pete in roofying someone, which, for the record, he absolutely is _not_. He clarifies quickly. “Or, you know, maybe Kool-Aid, instead of something that’s a mild sedative.”

Guilt _and_ jealousy? This is new. Usually Patrick feels only irritation and bored disinterest when it comes to Pete’s colorful love life. It’s almost like the stuff in the bottle was… nah. He shakes his head, Etch-a-Sketch style, to dispel any dumb, teenage notions of magic spells. He makes a mental note to call his mom at the next payphone and ask her if he’s allergic to NyQuil. It would explain a lot. And it would be super helpful if he could shake off these weird Pete-feelings with nothing more than a swift dose of antihistamine.

“No big deal,” Pete sighs — mourning the loss of his twelve dollars down Patrick’s careless gullet, presumably — then adds with heartbreaking softness, “She wouldn’t have wanted it anyway.”

Honest, Patrick mutters, “Then she’s an idiot.” He hopes Pete doesn’t hear.

Under his skin, Patrick’s bones feel like they’re buzzing, like there’s a half-formed lifeform down under his ribs, curled somewhere in the wet, red depths of his chest, beneath his heart. This must be how John Hurt felt right before that chestburster popped out of him like a couple of slices of burnt toast. He touches his sternum and reminds himself that Alien isn’t real.

But — and this is purely theoretical speculation — what if magic _is?_

***

They still don’t really have a following. Not in a ‘tear through cardboard boxes of CDs they made using Patrick’s mom’s computer and Pete’s mom’s printing pass at the high school where she works as an administrator’ sort of way, anyway. Honestly, one of these days, they’re going to get caught by someone who _isn’t_ fooled by Patrick’s ‘don’t yell at me, I have asthma’ excuse and then where will they be? Pulling a Shawshank Redemption in a federal facility.

Anyway, they might not be turning over the boxes of shirts or homemade posters that his dad enquires about — with heavy negative inflection — every time he ventures into the garage. But like, they have _some_ fans. Enough that they occasionally have to draw a sad face on a board outside of another basement venue alongside those immortal words: :’( SOLD OUT!

Tonight is one of those nights. Kismet and fate have aligned and summoned an army of fans of totally up and coming pop punk bands with angry lyrics about the girls that didn’t show enough interest to become Patrick’s ex-girlfriends. It’s three days before Valentine’s Day so screaming about heartbreak is seventy-two hours away from being romantic.

Pete’s not sure if it’s fate or Myspace or his own desperate LiveJournal network spidering out like an endless series of veins threading across the Midwest and Northeastern Seaboard. But somehow, they’ve summoned close to two-hundred kids into one packed room that smells of Axe deodorant, teenage sweat and hormones. It tastes electric on the back of Pete’s tongue, like pop rocks and cheap cola bubbling through his nervous system.

They’re about halfway through Saturday which means this is the part where Pete, traditionally, chases Patrick down across the three feet of space they have at the front of the four-inch high riser they’re calling a stage. The thrill of the chase. The hard-won prize. The thirty God-given seconds in each twenty-four rotation of this sad, wet planet where Pete can breathe in that woodsy, musky-sweet Patrick smell and finally stop vibrating like something inside of him is trying to hatch.

Okay, maybe he has a tiny crush. And maybe he’s abandoned the improbability of the love potion stupidity but like, would it be _so_ weird to buy Patrick one of those packs of chalky valentine candies with the cutesy ‘be mine’ platitudes stamped on them in pastel colors? Because, you know, _everyone_ likes candy and if he just goes ahead and buys a pack but fakes like they were on sale then—

Pete screams. Not the usual, throat-shattering call to arms that he bellows through the mic cable and under the gold velvet of Patrick’s dulcet tones. No, this is a patented, high-pitched Pete Wentz shock scream.

Patrick is not in his usual position huddled fearfully against Joe like Pete might intend to use his smiling teeth for non-passionate biting. Instead, Patrick is _all up_ in Pete’s personal space, the peak of his hat colliding painfully with the bridge of Pete’s nose as he fills an area of the stage that ought to be empty.

Patrick, it seems, has gone rogue.

Under his hat, Patrick is smiling. It’s a big, beaming, _genuine_ smile and Pete has no idea how to react. Patrick leans in and, like he’s been holding his breath, _exhales_ all over Pete’s throat, a rush of air and heat slipping through the cracks and down into Pete’s pores. Patrick melts over him like sun-softened chocolate bars, oozing along Pete’s skin like molasses as he leans over his guitar and rests a hand in the sweaty, probably gross, small of Pete’s back. To add a further distracting layer of future masturbation material, he mouths stickily at Pete’s pulse. Pete’s heart rabbits, stops, he woozes and wonders if he’s having a stroke.

It’s official. There was something weird in that NyQuil and Patrick is now delirious.

***

In any other circumstance, Patrick might be concerned that his usual flight response has been replaced with an apparent on-stage make out mission. But Pete smells so good and Patrick is imbued with warm, fuzzy feelings about the shape of Pete’s mouth against his neck. He’s not even mad about the erection currently attempting to punch a hole in the back of his guitar.

Why, it’s almost like being in…

***

The back of the van is not the kind of space that generally inspires sexy thoughts. There are too many pairs of unwashed boxers for one thing, and the rotten food they can’t locate but can absolutely smell doesn’t help either. Pete is staring at the ceiling, his damp shirt clinging uncomfortably as Joe and Andy argue in the far-flung continent of the front seats. Patrick’s breathing low and steady, silent presumed sleeping.

Pete is not going to overthink the incident on stage. Not thinking about things is his specialty subject. If he could’ve majored in not thinking about things, there’s no doubt in his mind that he would’ve graduated with honors and been offered tenure on the faculty by the time he was nineteen.

From the depths of a sleeping bag that smells of cheese Doritos, Patrick whispers, “Hey. You awake?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Clearly, I’m awake, what’s up?” Patrick, rather than climbing out of the sleeping bag like a normal person, shuffle hops his way across the floor of the van and lands with his mouth very close to Pete’s ear. He smiles at Pete, predatory, like a murderer. For a moment, Pete worries that Patrick might actually _be_ a serial killer and he’s spent the past year of his life being groomed into compliance. Then, he figures that enough scene kids saw them together at the show tonight that, in the event that three quarters of Fall Out Boy go missing on the I-94, at very least, his parents will receive closure. It’s been a weird couple of days. “Hey, how many people have you killed?”

Patrick shuffles a little closer. “None.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what a murderer would say—”

“I have a boner,” Patrick says breathily. This isn’t a turn Pete imagined the serial killer conversation taking. He stops breathing entirely. “And I wondered if you wanted to help me out with it.”

The response of Pete’s dick in his pants is entirely Pavlovian. He springs hard fast enough to pull a muscle and makes a sound like he’s been punched in the gut. _“What?”_

“I mean, I could get you off, too! I’m — I’ve had a _lot_ of practice, if you get what I mean. I’m pretty good at it. At least, I’ve never had any complaints… from myself… So, yeah. Let’s do this!”

In any other situation Pete wouldn’t hesitate for even a heartbeat. But this is not a normal situation, this is a situation in which it’s looking increasingly plausible that Pete has bent Patrick’s will to his own desperate fantasies.

So, he squeaks, “Not today, thank you,” like his mother dealing with a particularly enthusiastic door-to-door proselytizer. “I’m going to sleep, big day tomorrow!”

Patrick pauses, baffled, “Are you _serious_?”

God, but he wants to kiss Patrick until he can’t breathe, wants to lean closer and find the way Patrick folds around him. He wants to know the way Patrick moans when his throat, collar bones, nipples are kissed. On the other side of this argument, the angel to his sexual reprobate devil, is the whispered thought that he wants to do those things _after_ Patrick has been suitably wooed. Something about Patrick makes him feel old-fashioned.

Instead of any of that coming out his mouth, he says, “I mean, it’s just that, you know, yeah.”

Pete says a lot without saying much at all.

“Oh,” says Patrick softly, like he regrets everything. Not just the stage gay or the hand job request but the tour, the band, ever laying eyes on Pete in the first place. “Yeah, no. I get it.”

“It’s not like that,” Pete insists.

Patrick’s humiliation is palpable and unwarranted. He shrugs, “It’s cool. I just thought…”

Pete almost kisses him immediately, right on the mouth, anything to stop the insidious spread of self-deprecation that Patrick wears like a mismatched trucker hat. To make the point perfectly clear, Pete’s reticence to stuff his hand down the front of Patrick’s pants and bring him off panting, gasping, desperate, has nothing to do with an aversion to _Patrick_. It seems, somewhere between knee socks and hard cocks, Pete developed an ethical code. The timing could not be worse.

“So, and at the moment this is just speculation because I get how fucking weird it sounds, but like, what if this potion thing is actually real?” Pete asks quietly. Honestly, he’s struggling to think of an alternative explanation and, as with all scientific data, the most obvious answer is usually the correct one.  “What if I’ve made you fall in love with me?”

“It’s just a hand job, not a marriage proposal, jeez.” Patrick rolls over and tugs the sleeping bag up to his chin, taking his penis with him, “Well, if it _is_ real, I’m sorry you wasted it on me.”

_It wouldn’t be wasted_ , _not for me,_ Pete thinks desperately _._ He touches Patrick’s shoulder and tries to convey in a single gesture that in literally any other circumstance, he would be _thrilled_ to road test Patrick’s masturbation technique. It turns out that thinking about Patrick perfecting that technique doesn’t make him especially eloquent as he blurts out, “It’s _ethics_ , you know? _Morals.”_

“Yeah,” Patrick mutters darkly, “You have a _ton_ of those, I’m sure. I’ve watched you demonstrate them with basically half of our fanbase.”

“It’s just—”

“Don’t.”

It’s the last thing either of them say until they reach Milwaukee.

***

“Love potions aren’t real.”

Patrick makes this declaration to Joe as they share a slice of sausage pizza — New York style, so it doesn’t strictly qualify — out front of a by-the-slice pie store in a strip mall half a mile from the bar they’re playing tonight. They’re sharing because neither of them has the necessary $2.39 to obtain their _own_ slice. Joe snags the largest piece of sausage and crams it into his mouth before Patrick can object.

“I don’t know,” Joe lightly spackles Patrick’s hoodie with masticated meat, “seemed pretty real when you were hanging off him like a clingy girlfriend last night.”

“You saw that?” asks Patrick, panicked, because to him, _last night_ means embarrassing rejections of his sexual advances — sexual advances he didn’t even realize he _wanted to make_ until twelve hours ago.

“Dude, you did it in front of two hundred people. _Yes_ , I saw that.”

Presumably he means the full-body drape and not the offered (and rejected) hand job. Patrick’s sigh of relief is heartfelt.

“I don’t love _Pete_ ,” he says firmly, ignoring the cherry soda sweetness that explodes across his tongue as he says the name. He also ignores the way Pete makes his heart beat a little fast in his chest, makes his lungs kick up into triple speed when he slings an arm around him and calls him by a stupid nickname. Pete inspires a lot of _feelings_ in Patrick and, honestly, he’s quite happy to continue ignoring them like a good Heterosexual Best Friend. “Pete has all of the loveable personality of a potato. And not even a _good_ potato, not the ones they use to make White Castle fries or something exotic like that, no. He’s like, the potato you see in the gutter outside of Kroger’s and say _hey, look, someone dropped a potato outside of Kroger’s._ And then you move on with your life and you _don’t think about the fucking potato outside of Kroger’s ever again._ ”

Joe blinks, “So, you’re not invested in this emotionally, or anything?”

“That’s sort of the point. My lack of emotional investment, I mean. Last night was just a reaction to the cough syrup that he tricked me into drinking because he’s an asshole.”

“I’m pretty sure you drank that willingly.”

“Hmm,” says Patrick. His heart has felt like an Alka-Seltzer since yesterday morning, fizzing and effervescent in his chest. He knows ‘placebo’ is not just the name of an alternative rock band but he’s almost certain that the subject has to _believe_ in the effect of what they’ve taken. As an eighteen-year-old of at least average intelligence, he knows he doesn’t believe in love potions. And yet… It’s believe in the love potion or admit he might have an actual, demonstrable crush on Pete Wentz. He’s not ready to become a Myspace fangirl quite yet. “What if love potions are real.”

“You just said they _aren’t_.”

“But what if I’m _wrong_? What if Pete has… _finagled_ my affections? He once stole the last of my deodorant, socks and Cheetos in one day, you know. He’s untrustworthy.”

“Do you love him or not?” Joe asks, bored, cramming in the rest of the pizza.

Well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? This always seems easier in John Hughes movies because the person with a crush _knows_ they have a crush and it’s not a confusing mess of indecipherable feelings and random erections. Patrick suspects his penis is a very poor judge of character but it _is_ a very insistent one. God, Molly Ringwald has _no idea_ how easy she had it.

“Maybe…” he starts.

“Maybe… you’re in love with him? You’re not exactly subtle about it. _Told you_ , dude, fucking magic is… it’s fucking _weird_. Did I ever tell you about the time Satan spoke to me through a Slayer album?”

“Were you, by any chance, _high_ when that happened?” Joe has the grace to look sheepish. “Okay, so let’s assume that magic is real and Pete’s fucking… _bewitched_ me. How do I make it go away?”

Joe stares at him blankly. It’s apparent Patrick is going to have to do _everything_ , in the absence of some much-needed peer support. Then, Joe gets this look, slow like sunrise, thrilled like Christmas morning. He gasps, “I know! You need to fuck him!”

Patrick is pretty sure Joe just squealed that loudly enough that his own mother heard it back in Chicago. He clamps a hand over Joe’s sauce-stained mouth and whispers softly in his ear, “If you say that again, I’ll find the nearest body of water and drown you.”

They hold eye contact. Joe licks him. Patrick lets go.

“Hear me out,” Joe says, sucking pizza grease from his fingers. Sadly, Patrick has no other options. “How many people love Pete?”

“A disturbingly large and unjustified number if the comments on his LiveJournal are anything to go by.”

“Right,” Joe nods, picking up speed as the scientific brilliance of his idea really takes hold. “But how many of them love Pete _after_ they’ve fucked him? Pete’s worn boxer shorts for more consecutive days than the length of most of his relationships.”

“That’s,” _a stupid idea_ , is Patrick’s first reaction. Except, it’s not. Not when Patrick thinks about it clearly. Hell, Pete’s never held together a relationship that didn’t end in the other party hating his guts. Patrick doesn’t _want_ to hate his guts but maybe a blowjob will be enough to reset the delicate balance. “Joe, you’re a genius.”

“I am? I mean, I _am_.”

Neither of them mentions that Patrick has never attempted to seduce someone in his life. Well, aside from informing Pete that he had an erection and then, essentially, pointing it at him and hoping for the best. That was a dry run. An opportunistic attempt. Next time, Patrick will be ready, he’ll be prepared, he’ll give it with both — uh, _one_ — barrel. Patrick’s pretty sure Pete’s into it, that the ethical code he talked about wasn’t a subtle hint for Patrick to back off. He’s felt the improbable swell of Pete’s cock against his thigh when they roughhouse on the basement floor at his mom’s house. Health class taught him a man of Pete’s age should have that thing mostly under control by now.

There’s no way Pete can resist a planned attack. And maybe, once they’re done, this weird, fuzzy warmness that creeps its way across Patrick’s chest whenever Pete smiles at him will give up and let him be.

He’ll be back to normal by morning.

***

Patrick pours into the passenger seat after their show. He seems to fill the front of the van with his intent, lets it hang on the air between them as he drums his fingertips against the dashboard, taps out a rhythm on his thighs with the heels of his hands. Every so often, he catches Pete’s eye in the rear-view mirror.

When he smiles, Pete finds it hard to breathe. Patrick is. Well, Patrick _is_.

“Great show tonight,” Pete says jovially, like his dad used to say after half-decent soccer games during middle school. “The way you brought in Pretty in Punk? Man, I just about fucking _died_ , it was so smooth!”

They have this tradition for ending tours in motels. They lie on stained sheets in creaking twin beds and talk about how awesome it’s going to be when they have five-star hotels and private jets. They raise cans of warm gas station beer and tell fairytales of how they’re going to trade it out for cold champagne bought with stacks of crisp hundred-dollar bills and not sweaty rolls of ones and damp, bottom of the pocket loose change.

“Hmm,” says Patrick from the passenger seat, smiling at the freeway. It’s a dangerous smile. Pete’s heartbeat feels low and heavy, out of his chest and into his guts as he tightens his grip on the steering wheel until his knuckles shine through, bone pale in the streetlights. “How long ’til we get to the motel?”

“About five—” Patrick’s hand finds his knee in the dark little pocket of liminal space where Joe and Andy don’t exist. Pete squeaks, undignified. “Uh… Shit, about — five minutes?”

Patrick doesn’t move his hand, doesn’t look at Pete. But he does lick his lips, slowly, like he knows exactly what it does to that part of Pete’s pants, below the belt buckle, between the inseams. His hand slides with deliberate consideration to Pete’s mid-thigh. He squeezes.

“Can’t wait to take a shower. I’m feeling really,” he pauses, takes the pointer finger of his free hand and sucks on it slowly, it’s like something out of a cheap porn movie and Pete is now so hard his brain has gone numb, “ _dirty_.”

It’s very difficult to swallow with a throat swollen up with agonized lust. Patrick is apparently inspiring anaphylactic shock, that or Pete is allergic to the gummy bears he crammed into his mouth as they piled into the van. This is not the plan. The plan involved having a Serious Adult Conversation back in Chicago. It involved eating boxed mac and cheese by the light of dollar store taper candles jammed into the neck of an empty Milwaukee’s Best bottle because, God knows, Pete has never owned a candlestick or anything like it in his _life_. There was the possibility of first kisses in pillow forts in front of the TV watching Ghostbusters for the fortieth time because Patrick loves it and Pete.

Pete loves Patrick.

He thinks it in black and white but not like newsprint and more like Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It’s — it’s really hard to have poetic thoughts when he’s this fucking _hard_.

The milometer must be broken because they appear to be moving backwards through space and time. He whimpers as Patrick keeps his hand still and prays to the Gods of inappropriate band romance to grant him the strength of will not to ravish Patrick ten ways from Sunday.

It takes approximately twenty-seven years but, finally, they pull into the arctic wasteland of the motel parking lot. Patrick slithers over the bench seat which brings the ripe-peach roundness of his denim-clad ass within biting distance of Pete’s reckless, salivating mouth. He sinks his teeth into his bottom lip and stares at the flickering flamingo on the neon sign.

“You _coming_?” he purrs, a dangerous little sex kitten, oblivious to the effect he’s having on Pete’s libido and stuttering moral compass.

“Yep!” Pete declares. And then, in an act of nefarious, quick-witted treachery in the beat after Patrick and Joe clamber out of the van’s side doors and before Andy makes it out of the back door, he clunks down the lock.

“What the fuck?” says Andy reasonably. “Did you just lock me in the van?”

“Technically? I locked Patrick _out_ of the van. You being in here is nothing more than a coincidental side-effect.” Pete hasn’t removed his hands from the steering wheel. His knuckles are bloodless which is more than can be said for his traitorous penis. “I have a question.”

“Me too,” Andy grumbles. “Like why locking Patrick _out_ of the van had to involve locking me _in_ the van.”

“I can’t give away all of my secrets, can I? Then there’d be no mystery,” Pete says, eyeing Patrick warily through the windshield. Patrick waves, waggling his fingers in a way he probably thinks is seductive. That it so charmingly _isn’t_ works completely in his favor. “I need to talk to you about love potions.”

“Is that a euphemism?”

“It is not.”

“Unlock the door, Pete,” Andy sighs, done with this shit. “I have a cellphone and this is kidnap.”

“Hear me out, I think it’s _real_. Patrick is acting in distinctly non-Patricky ways! I’m trying to be a good person, but you _know_ how hard that is for me. I’m _not_ a good person, I’m a really terrible, awful person and I’m going to—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Andy says with a shudder. “I will pay you the entire contents of my wallet if you don’t finish that sentence.”

“I just want to know. You said the forces of the universe work in unusual ways or some He-Man theoretical bullshit. Do you think it’s real? Do you think I can fix it? I don’t want,” _to take advantage if it’s not real_ , “to do something Patrick’s gonna regret in the morning or next week or five years down the road and like, I’ve been thinking maybe I’m bisexual but maybe it’s just Patrick or maybe I just don’t want to slap a fucking label on it because I start to feel like those yellow sticker specials in the supermarket, you know?”

Andy looks at Pete in the rear-view mirror, his eyes narrowed and his head cocked. He doesn’t know. Or he does and he thinks Pete is an idiot. _Pete_ thinks Pete is an idiot so that seems fair. There is no universal or cosmic force in this or any other reality that could make his chest hurt any further with embarrassment. Finally, Andy breaks eye contact and grabs his bag from the mess of broken potato chips and discarded socks.

“Unlock the door, Pete,” he says evenly. The doors open with a metallic clunk and Andy reaches for the handle, pauses and looks back over his shoulder. “If you’ve unlocked something you don’t understand, maybe you’re supposed to be, I don’t know, _honest_ with Patrick? Tell him how you feel, dude. No bullshit. Maybe he’s a yellow sticker, too.”

The door slams closed behind him, an eddy of polar-cold air finding its way directly down the back of Pete’s hoodie, under his cuffs. He shivers and dreams of California for a moment.

It’s all so easy and so difficult and Pete is breathing hard enough that the glass is fogging and God, his cock has been hard enough to drill a board since Patrick touched his knee. This isn’t how romantic comedies are supposed to work. There’s twice as much terrifying uncertainty and nowhere close to enough cheerful Hall and Oates. Okay. _Okay._

Just tell Patrick how he feels.

How hard can that be?

***

Patrick is a master of make out. A syncopated siren of seduction. That is, he’s pretty sure he’s at least _technically_ capable of those things on a non-theoretical basis if he applies all of the things he’s seen people do to attract Pete’s attention in the past. God knows, there’s been a lot of them so Pete knows what turns him on, and Patrick? Patrick has not had that level of experience. But, like, how hard can it be to apply it practically?

So, he sways his hips on the walk up the concrete steps to the room and ignores the nagging voice that calls out for dinner and a movie first. Even if dinner is cold hot dogs in ranch dressing and the movie is from the stack of over-watched, frosted static cassette tapes they keep by the VCR in the apartment.

Someone in a room they walk by is playing Foreigner, obnoxious and loud like 80s power rock ballads are supposed to be. _I wanna know what love is, I want you to show me._ It brings that sugary sweet taste to the back of Patrick’s mouth, like he hasn’t eaten or brushed his teeth since he downed the syrupy not-really-a-love-potion in the back of the van. Has he become someone who wants to be romanced by Lou Gramm’s vocals through shitty portable speakers?

He glances back over his shoulder with his eyelids lowered suggestively. Pete is staring very hard at his shoes. He trips and nearly cracks his skull on the stair edge. Patrick is pretty sure Zooey Deschanel never had to work this hard to get the guy.

They find the door, room 138 which is insignificant in that Patrick has no particular connection to the number 138. He grabs Joe’s wrist as Pete and Andy move into the room and they hang back together, their warm breath fogging in the cold air and Patrick says, desperately, “Shit, Joe. I can’t fucking _seduce_ him! Sometimes, I struggle to talk _myself_ into touching my dick and I’m like, the only option I have!”

Joe smiles, “Dude, did you do the thigh grab thing we talked about?”

“He seemed way less into it than you assured me he would be. I’m starting to suspect you know a whole lot less about seducing people than you would have me believe. I feel lied to, Joseph.”

“We will go into the room,” Joe assures him crisply. “And in ten minutes, I’m going to fake a vegan pizza craving that makes Trainspotting look like amateur hour. Because Andy is a good father and an excellent provider, he’s going to take me for pizza. You’re going to blow Pete’s mind in ways we’re literally _never going to talk about_ and, in the morning, this whole love potion business is going to be over and done with.”

Patrick’s skull is full of buzzing fly words as he nods dumbly and follows Joe into the tacky, low-rent room. This is the kind of place modern American literature would tell him charges by the hour. The carpet, comforter and curtains share the same lurid design that looks a lot like vomit. It’s only the uniformity across all three that assures Patrick that the pattern is by design and not, in fact, a series of stains of unknown provenance. It is not a room that inspires seduction but maybe if he knocks out the lights…

“I’m going to take a shower,” says Patrick, with a significant look in Pete’s direction.

“I need to brush my teeth,” says Pete, in exactly the same breath. “Uh, no, after you. I can. I can wait.”

“Plenty of room for two in there,” Patrick purrs, feeling dumb and horny and lovesick and, seriously, fuck whatever the hell Pete bought in that stupid fucking magic store. Pete looks halfway between throwing him across the Jackson Pollock bedspread and leaping from the window. “C’mon, Wentz. You scared to share a bathroom with me? I don’t bite,” and he pauses, smiles with all of his teeth and leans against the door frame for half a beat and murmurs, “unless you want me to.”

Across the room, Pete makes a soft, strangled sound and rummages frantically for his toothbrush. In the bathroom, door left ajar, Patrick knocks on the shower and shrugs out of his clothes.

This has to work, or Patrick may die.

***

On the beds, Joe and Andy are engaging in an epic battle about pizza. It seems, if he’s to be believed, that Joe will pass away and expire if he doesn’t get a vegan supreme in the next five minutes. Andy is unconvinced about the validity of this statement and Pete? Well, Pete is struggling to form coherent thoughts, thus preventing him from verbalizing how little he cares about the outcome of their argument.

He grabs his shower things, by which he means his toothbrush and a travel bottle of Dove for men shower gel, and heads into the heat and steam of the bathroom.

“Just — me,” he says to the shadowy outline of Patrick behind the shower curtain. The shadow hums contentedly, a soft note between Jersey Girl and horniness. “Just brushing my teeth. Like we talked about.”

The main door to the motel room opens and closes. They’re all alone.

Toothpaste squeezed onto his toothbrush, Pete watches himself in the mirror. Behind him, the shower curtain ripples as Patrick moves, hands over his head, washing his hair. He is very pointedly _not_ trying to determine which direction Patrick is facing, not trying to decipher the shadows to work out if that’s a trick of the light right below the soft curve of Patrick’s belly or —

Pete palms his own aching erection through his jeans and makes another of those strangled moans Patrick is so good at enticing from him. He’s a horrible friend.

“Good show tonight,” he calls, again, through toothpaste foam, desperate to break the tension. If he doesn’t make normal, banal small talk, he’s going to football tackle the kid and figure out a way to fuck him through the shower curtain. But he _can’t_ because Patrick is not compos mentis, not of sound mind.

Not that Pete is functioning on all cylinders, what with ninety-nine percent of all oxygenated blood in his circulatory system doing its best to burst his cock down the seams.

“We should celebrate,” Patrick says, and it could be Pete’s overactive imagination but it sounds — by dint of the slow, wet noises behind the curtain — like Patrick is tugging at his swollen cock. “Why don’t you get in here? I could use a little help.”

“You need help… showering?” Pete asks his reflection and the reflection of Patrick’s shadow rubbing the reflection of Patrick’s shadow cock through a shower curtain that, in contravention of all laws of interior design is, somehow, the same lurid, vomit-stained pattern as the carpet, comforters and curtains. The owner of this motel really went all in: decor brought to you by The Artist Formerly Known as Chintz. “You’re eighteen. You know how to shower.”

The slick, wet sounds get faster, Patrick moans loudly. Pete is going to pass out from lack of blood to the brain, dizzy on the headrush of it as he grips into the bathroom countertop with both hands. Then, in an act of outright sexual warfare, Patrick turns and brings the warm, wet round of his ass to the sticky wet shower curtain. It slicks to him, tight like skin, hugging to each inch of that delicious, ripe peach ass.

Pete chokes so hard he sprays toothpaste all over the mirror.

“Come on, you know you want to. On the count of three, I’m gonna pull back this shower curtain and you’re going to join me in here. One…” Ethics and morals. “Two…” Ethics and morals. “ _Three!”_

Pete has already bolted for the safety of the bedroom, toothpaste foam in his hair, his eyes, his _nose_. This is bad because it means he misses out on the chance to slip into that shower with Patrick and learn the way his skin shapes to the touch of Pete’s palms, his mouth, his irredeemable erection.

It’s good, because it means he doesn’t have to see Patrick’s face when he finds nothing but empty space where Pete used to be.

***

Patrick blinks around the unoccupied bathroom, the closed, fake-walnut door, the spatters of fresh, green Crest on the half-fogged mirror. His reflection is shocked. His reflection is _pissed_. His reflection, with flushed pink cheeks and wet, stringy hair falling into his surprised eyes. It’s a shame this love potion didn’t grant him the physical package of rippling abs and movie star height. Still, he grits his teeth and hisses.

“ _Motherfucker_.”

***

Patrick drives the last leg back to Chicago the next morning. Pete places himself in the back with Joe and alternates between flipping through the Jonathan Franzen he’s been pretending to read the whole tour and staring out of the window at the flat, cold Midwest. Joe is making plans with his cellphone and Andy will drop them off and disappear back to whichever anarchist, straight-edge squat he’s living in, having made it perfectly clear that if he has to both tour and live with the rest of them, he will be forced into a killing spree.

This means that Pete and Patrick will be alone in the apartment. He’s trying very hard not to think about the things two consenting adults could get up to in an empty apartment, mostly because Patrick is not consenting thanks to the whole love potion _thing_. Still, maybe they can have one of those adult conversations Andy’s always advocating.

Or maybe this is all bullshit and Patrick just really wants a blowjob.

Pete’s always been the kind of guy to go with it, to enjoy the endless feast of physical sensation that life has to offer. He wants to touch every golden sunset and feel each tingling rush through his veins because those glorious high points demand payment in the form of crippling lows. With Patrick, things feel different. Pete wants the things that come after the hotglorious heat of orgasm. He wants to make the kid pancakes for breakfast, wants to cuddle with him and stroke his hair and touch his soft, pale flanks under Pete’s old Arma shirts.

It must be love, love, _love._

Pete watches the Midwest and the cars and the semi-trucks and counts off the mile markers until they’re home.

***

Tonight is the night and Patrick has a plan. By which he means he has a series of things he intends to do that, when he recites them just right, sound like they might have been put together on purpose and are not just him pulling this stuff out of his ass. He has shaved. He is wearing cologne — not the cheap stuff from the floor of his closet, no, he detoured specifically to Fragrance Outlet and piled on the good shit from sample bottles smudged with fingermarks. He has combed his hair. Hell, he’s even trimmed his pubes in the shower. Patrick is a man on a mission of seduction and tonight, with the apartment to themselves, he will not be deterred.

It’s the night before valentine’s and he wonders if he should’ve done something to mark the holiday. Litter Pete’s creaking single bed in rose petals, maybe. Clutch a single red rose between his teeth. Shave his pubes into a heart. Or an arrow. Something classy.

Patrick is laid on Pete’s bed and it smells of sweat, smells of come, smells of unwashed hair and unwashed jeans and innumerable things that he should find disgusting. He should wrinkle his nose, he should toss it in the washing machine, he should _burn the damn thing_ before it spawns and takes over the world. But he’s _in_ love or _in_ sane so he presses his nose to the comforter and commits each top note to memory like Pete’s poor personal hygiene is a fine wine and he, Patrick, is a connoisseur.

He’s trying very hard not to think about the failed attempts. Dwelling on failure is for losers and they do say quitters never win. Basically, if this doesn’t work, the plan is to pack up shop, quit the band, Chicago and life in the twenty-first century and head out to Alaska to be an ice fisherman. Patrick knows nothing of fishing but he’s got an array of appropriately styled hats, some crazy good sideburns and enough puffy zip-through vests in his closet that he’ll probably blend in. He pokes his big toe into a hole in Donatello’s left whatever it is that turtles have instead of ears and asks himself, _again_ , why the hell he’s even doing this.

Through the wall, the shower shuts off and Patrick’s heart proves it’s entirely possible for internal organs to breakdance. He’s still a little hazy on the finer points of the plan he concocted with Joe over veggie chili cheese fries they could ill afford at the diner where they only charge half price because Patrick and Joe look so pathetically young and hungry that the (female, middle-aged, ‘I have a couple of sons about your age’) owner doesn’t want to see them without a hot meal. Honestly, the plan seemed way smarter when Joe was sketching it out in pencil on the back of a paper napkin and now, _now_ Patrick is naked and laid on Pete’s filthy good smelling sheets with his dick popping hard and soft so fast it’s at risk of inciting erectile whiplash, well.

This plan seems less than awesome.

But all is fair in sex and love potions and Pete _is_ the reason he wound up chugging that thing in the first place. So, this means its totally Pete’s fault that Patrick sees the world in shades of pink and red and glittered gold marbled through it all like luminescent veins of feeling. Patrick is not a poet but he wants Pete, is what he’s trying to say. He wants to feel the shape of that thick, wide mouth with its sharp, clever teeth on every inch of his soft, pale skin. He wants to test the give of those liquid smooth muscles under all of that golden skin, to learn the way Pete’s cock wants his mouth, his hands, his – other places.

More than that, he wants to hold him when it’s done. He wants to fall asleep in Pete’s arms and wake up there and know he can fall asleep there again the next night. But that’s what the potion has done to him and hopefully the NC-17 stuff will deal with the PG-13 _feelings_ and then it won’t matter.

So yeah, long story short, _that_ is why Patrick is naked on Pete’s bed with freshly-trimmed pubic hair and his plump, pink prick in his sweaty fist.

The bathroom door clicks open. There are four steps between the bathroom door and Pete’s bedroom door. Patrick knows because he counted them on the way in here. This means he has somewhere between two and three seconds before Pete’s hand closes around the doorknob and he throws open the door and finds Patrick, chin propped in one hand and dick caught in the other. That is, Patrick knows, not enough time for Patrick to even pull on his underwear (if they were in here, which they’re not, because luck never favored the meek). Hell, it isn’t even enough time to grab the pillow from by his head and grant himself modesty with Leonardo’s stupid, judgy, stuck up face.

(Honestly, the only dude who seems to know how this goes is Michelangelo. He’s got the kind of smile on his face that says he knows what’s up, that he understands and supports Patrick’s poorly thought out plan.)

Pete makes the journey in three steps, not four, his hand on the door and the door creaking open and Patrick’s dick is suddenly hard as iron in his hand and his heart is going to explode and this _has to work_ because he loves him, he loves him, he _loves him_. The door bangs against the wall.

Pete’s wet. Dewed up like a ripe tomato on a Burger King ad, kind of shiny, dotted with crystals of high-alkaline Chicago water. Patrick wants to lick them, taste them, swallow down the way they paint over Pete’s tattoos and find out if the ink tastes any different to the taut, gold skin around it. When Pete sees Patrick on his bed, on his dirty sheets, the hand at his waist falters and the ragged-edged, threadbare towel knotted there slips down over his angular hip bones, over his thighs and past his knees and hits the battered linoleum at his feet.

They are now both naked, both in the vicinity of a bed. Things happen to naked people on beds. Patrick knows this to be a universal _fact_.

Pete’s eyes are wide and round, rich as liquid gold and just as rare, he gasps, “Why are you in my room?”

On the bed, dick still in his hand and brain his in his dick, Patrick licks his lips and rasps the first thing that comes into his head through his traitorously dry throat.

“Do me like one of your scene girls.”

Patrick wishes something else came to mind first.

“That is – that is blatant Titanic appropriation.”

“You make me feel James Cameron kind of crazy,” Patrick says nonsensically. But why does anything have to make sense? He drank a fucking _love potion_ and love potions aren’t _real_ but here he is, with Leonardo, Donatello and Raphael judging him for his lewd nudity on his bandmate’s bed and Michelangelo being cool about it and all he really wants is to feel normal again. To let the soles of his feet touch the ground and his lungs fill with oxygen that’s already been filtered through Pete’s lungs.

“What am I supposed to do?” Pete looks like he’s asking Leonardo — probably because of the Titanic appropriation — and fuck that guy. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to,” Patrick pauses and takes a deep breath because it should be obvious. His dick is hard and Pete’s dick is hard and they both want this and he’s never tried to seduce someone before and no one really talked him through it and, oh yeah, Patrick _loves him_ , but still, he continues like a historical romance novel, “I want you to, you know, like… ravish me. Have your way with me?”

He rolls to his back and spreads his legs a little for good measure. Pete makes an agonized, tortured sound from low down in his belly and touches a fingertip to the thick, ridged cap of his cock. This is looking promising.

“Ravish? Have my?” Pete leans weakly against the open door. A drop of water rolls from his hair to his earlobe, beading like a jewel and then dropping to his chest, flowing over the brown bud of his left nipple and Patrick’s cock twitches like his mouth is there to catch it. Pete is teetering, half a step away from doing the right thing and fixing the mess he created so they can go back to being Patrick the band nerd who writes the songs about the girls Pete fucks, the girls who break his heart.

“Let me love you how they didn’t,” says Patrick. “Just for tonight.”

***

Pete is going to Hell.

Scratch that, there’s every possibility that Pete slipped on the soap in the shower, smashed his skull open on the side of the tub, bled out and is now actually in Hell. He is doomed to spend the rest of eternity climbing out of his shower and finding this pink-faced, plump-cocked angel of debauchery laid out on his bed, begging even though Pete can’t touch him, like some twisted approximation of that kid with the shotgun wound from Preacher.

Pete wants this, more than he wants to draw his next breath into his lungs. Pete has been allowing Patrick to write their lyrics, even though he _sucks_ at it, because he doesn’t want to admit that every notebook he owns is filled with poetry about unrequited love, about the person in his head who doesn’t want his heart. This is the sum total of every fantasy of the two of them Pete has ever had but without Patrick kissing him afterward, without the possibility that Pete can take him out to breakfast the morning after and they can laugh at the way Pete talks in his sleep and share couple jokes in a booth in the diner they’ll come to think of as theirs.

Patrick thinks he wants this, but he doesn’t. He’s just under the influence of ancient magic or modern NyQuil but either way he is _not_ of sound mind and Pete can’t.

He just can’t.

So, he does the sensible thing. The good thing. The only logical thing available to him in a room full of illogical but irredeemably tempting options.

He grabs the key from the lock, slams the door closed and seals Patrick and his tight, tempting, _lush_ little ass right there with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sheets and the unironic SpongeBob poster on the wall. What Pete needs right now, as Patrick begins to hammer on the door, is backup and common sense and someone to prevent him from thinking with his dick. He needs to call Andy. Team bonding dictates he should probably call Joe, too.

“Band meeting!” he informs Patrick through the door.

“Just come inside, we can figure this out!”

“Band meeting!” Pete repeats, fumbling for his phone with fingers that feel all thumbs.

“Okay, fuck you! Let me out! You can’t — this is a hostage situation!”

“ _Band. Meeting.”_

He is naked and shivering and the hallway is dark and his clothes are all inside the bedroom and Patrick’s clothes are all outside of it. This is not the way he imagined spending the night before Valentine’s.

***

They sit in the living room in silence. Patrick is dressed in Pete’s old bootcamp sweats and a Metallica shirt that’s too small. It rides up and shows a thin slice of his soft, pale stomach. Pete is wearing Patrick’s abandoned Snoopy boxers and a pair of mismatched socks. They look like they were caught fucking and got dressed in the dark. Patrick has never felt so hurt, so heartsick, so embarrassed it feels like his ribs might cave in.

“So,” says Joe, licking a pencil and taking minutes on the back of a pizza menu, “what do we know so far?”

“I bought the love potion,” says Pete carefully, like there’s something he’s hiding, “Patrick _stole_ the love potion and sucked it down like a squeeze-n-slurp. Now he thinks the only way to _stop_ being in love with me is to ride my dick because _somebody_ ,” and here he glares murderously at Joe who doesn’t notice because Joe is still taking notes, “told him that no one stays in love with me after I’ve fucked them.”

Patrick stays very still on the couch, counting the indentations on the fake-hardwood linoleum under his feet and keeping his toes very precisely in the center. He cannot move because if he _does_ , if he looks up and looks Pete in the eye and sees that he doesn’t actually care, then there’s every possibility his heart is going to tear in half and he’s going to bleed out right here on their Craigslist couch.

“Patrick,” says Andy kindly. “These feelings for Pete, are they something new?”

Patrick blinks at his toes. They’re very pink, blushing, Patrick knows now that all exposed skin can blush, not just the cheeks, the neck, the forehead. He knows this because he’s spent the past three days in a perpetual state of needy embarrassment. He nods his head, shakes it, he doesn’t really know. “I don’t know.”

“Okay, don’t worry, it’s fine. And Pete, what about you?”

“Pete doesn’t want me,” Patrick cuts in, before Pete has to say it out loud. It’s easier hearing it in his own voice, in shaping his own mouth to the words rather than having them fall from Pete’s. “He bought that potion for _some girl_ and I – I ruined it.”

“Patrick… ruined… it…” Joe whispers to himself across the room, pencil working furiously across the paper.

“Oh God,” groans Pete, his head in his lovely, too-large hands with their neat, pink nails and big, masculine knuckles. Ugh, fixation on insignificant details. “Patrick, my dude, _no_ , I – it’s not like that.”

“It’s fine that it’s _like that_ ,” Patrick says, demonstrating how fine it is by nodding furiously, “I’m _okay_ with it being _like that_ , you don’t have to lie to me and tell me it’s _not like that_. I’m short and I’m dorky and I wear stupid hats and I’m a _guy_ , and that’s all _totally fine_ , it’s—”

“I’m in love with you!” Pete bellows. The room goes very still. Patrick’s heart forgets to beat and his lungs forget to contract and expand and this is not the way it happens in romance movies except – except this is _totally_ the way it happens in the movies. “I’m – I’m fucking _in love_ with you, okay?”

“In… love… with… you…”

“Joe, seriously, knock that shit off,” Pete snarls and Patrick’s heart and lungs and guts and gray matter are all jump starting one another, ricocheting around in his skeleton like adrenaline driven pinball. His mouth is opening, closing, no sound is coming out but the thoughts are misfiring in his blown-glass skull, _love you, love you, love you_. “Rick, I bought the fucking potion for _you_ , because I wanted – I wanted to give you something that might make you laugh and like, we could fake it was a joke but maybe you’d think about it and think about _me_ and maybe it would turn out you’d feel the same.”

“Oh,” says Patrick, eloquently and this, _this_ is why they let him write the lyrics. “Uh.”

“And now you _do_ , but it’s all that stupid fucking potion and I want to take you up on every offer you’ve made the past couple of days. I want to have every fucking inch of you but I want _you_ to want it, too. I want to take you to bed and have you there in the morning, drooling on my pillow and farting on my leg and hogging my stupid fucking cartoon bedsheets.”

There’s every possibility that Patrick’s cheeks may crack from the width of his smile, every tooth on display as he beams adoration across the room at Pete’s frowning, Saturday in Ikea sad face.

“I want that too!” says Patrick – Joe and Andy look less keen on being in the room, Patrick cares not. “I _so_ want that!”

“The _potion_ wants that! Not _you_!”

“Don’t you tell me what my stupid brain wants! I’ve lived in here for eighteen years, I’ve figured that fucker out, I’m telling you—”

“I have an idea,” Andy declares. “How about, in the morning, we ride out to the magic store, we talk to the clerk and we see if he has anything to lift the effects of this love potion,” and then he nips the bridge of his nose very tightly and mutters, “I can’t believe I’m discussing the potential antidote to fucking _love potions_.”

“Road trip!” Joe squeals, like they didn’t just get back from four weeks in the van, breathing in the smell of one another’s feet and farts and studiously ignoring the sound of furtive masturbation under sleeping bags.

They pull out blankets and pillows for Andy on the couch because apparently this is the kind of road trip that has to start early. Joe slumps off to his room with his notes and the empty potion bottle and his laptop and a serious comment about conducting research. Pete and Patrick pause in the liminal space between their bedroom doors. Pete’s mismatched socks both have holes big enough for his toes to poke through.

Pete rubs the back of his neck, he says, “So.”

“So,” Patrick repeats sagely, pretending he’s an adult and he’s okay with all of this. Then he remembers that he’s neither of those things and he reaches shyly for Pete’s hand. “If I promise not to misquote Titanic at you, or remove my penis from my pants, do you think maybe we could… share a bed tonight?”

His chest is tight, tight, tight and this is Pete, Pete with his big-knuckled, stupid hand in Patrick’s and his concerned, big-brotherly eyes on Patrick’s face as he hesitates and then whispers, “I want to. You know that, right? I’ve wanted to do everything you’ve suggested over the past couple days. Honestly, you’re proving to me that I’m a far better person than I ever imagined I could be.”

That Pete is a good person has never been a question for Patrick’s numerous internal debates. Fast-thinking, beautiful-minded, gorgeously honest, open book Pete with his heart on his sleeve and his brain in his pants. Patrick touches his cheek and says again, “Share a bed with me. Just for tonight.”

“Nothing will happen?” Pete asks, clearly terrified of ruining this, ruining them, ruining Patrick.

Patrick smiles, and, because he’s still talking like a romance novel, he says, “Your virtue will remain intact. I, uh — I might ask you to snuggle with me, though.”

And Pete grins, lopsided and lovely and leads the way back to his Ninja Turtle sheets and says, “Snuggling is cool. I like to snuggle.”

***

Patrick is a koala grip cuddler.

Pete likes it.

A lot.

***

“What if he can’t _fix_ me?” Patrick asks from the passenger seat behind Pete. “What if I never find out if this is how I really feel or if it’s just a side-effect?”

“He can fix you,” Pete nods, determined.

“What if the store is like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story and, when we get there, there’s just an empty lot and everyone in the town is like “Oh, the old magic store? That place burnt down years ago?” you know? Something like that?” Andy says from the back bench.

“That is _not_ going to happen,” Pete says between gritted teeth because, seriously, does Andy really need to wish _that_ particular scenario into existence _right now_?

“What if a bulldog and shih tzu had a baby? Would it be a bullshit?” asks Joe absently, his forehead smeared to the window.  

Pete is not even going to dignify that with an answer. They rocket into the parking lot like the van is on rails, narrowing missing the congregation of high school kids on the curb by the diner and there it is. There it _is_ , right in the center of the lot, jammed between a Subway and a sporting goods outlet. He swings the van across two parking spaces until Andy glares at him to straighten up. “This is an emergency, but we’re _not_ savages.”

And then the doors are opening and everyone is spilling outside and its just Pete and Patrick in the front seat and Patrick takes his hand and looks at him with those wide, blue, sincere eyes and he says, “I’m scared.”

“He can fix you,” Pete mutters, because loving Pete is something toxic and unwanted, like a cancer or a puss and blood infection, it requires a cure. The poison has to be removed. It’s not healthy to love Pete Wentz. “I know he can.”

Patrick opens his door but keeps Pete’s hand in his grip. He shrugs his shoulders and keeps looking at Pete and says, “I don’t want this feeling to go away. I want to love you. I’m _supposed_ to love you.”

Because Pete is good at sounding braver than he feels, he loosens their grip on one another and opens the door. He ignores the way his heart cracks with the creak of the ungreased hinges and places a foot on the running board. Just before he climbs down from the van he looks back at Patrick and smiles. He hopes it’s reassuring.

“You don’t want to love me. Like you and Joe said, no one ever does.”

Patrick looks as though Pete has punched him in the stomach.

They file into the store grim-faced and serious. This is a medical emergency and, in an episode of House, this is the moment that Hugh Laurie would be called into the room to prod and examine and poke and pull the rare disease that no one has contracted outside of 1840s Poland out of his medical journal and make everything okay. Instead, they have the same, sour faced clerk that Pete remembers from his first visit. He’s sipping Mountain Dew Code Red and reading obscure Japanese comic books. Pete still hates him intensely.

“You probably know why I’m here,” Pete declares, like Humphrey Bogart as Dixon Steele but without the cigarette or fedora.

The clerk glances up then looks right back at his comic book, “Sexual dysfunction aids are down the back, right next to the incense.”

_“Hey!”_ Pete marches across the store. The store is roughly eight feet wide so this is swift and undramatic. He slaps the comic book closed which makes it slightly _more_ dramatic, but probably not quite dramatic enough. The clerk sighs, bored, and looks up slowly. “That’s better. Now, you listen to me, I came in here a couple days ago and you sold me a love potion. My friend here totally drank it and now he thinks he’s in love with me. I don’t know what kind of store it is you think you’re running here but let me tell _you,_ my father is a _lawyer_ , a real one, not one of those strip mall, bench ad types. He has a _corner_ _office_. And if you don’t tell me how to put this right, he is going to _sue_ you so hard, your—”

“They’re a novelty item.”

“Ass won’t touch the — wait. What?” Pete stares at the clerk.

There is no way he heard that correctly. Because that would mean that Patrick is not, in fact, under the influence of mystical dark magic and is, instead, under the influence of common or garden lust.

Or, well, _love_.

The clerk shrugs, “I said, they’re a novelty item. It’s food coloring and sugar water, dude. Okay, maybe a drop or two of cough syrup.”

Pete should probably blink. Or close his mouth. “No. No, love potions are _real_. You see, this is Patrick Stump and he’s basically the human embodiment of a sunny June day and somehow, after he drank that stuff, he thinks _I’m_ that guy. Sunny June days do not fall for rainy January mornings.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” says the clerk, grabbing a display of wiccan themed letter openers and tugging them carefully out of Pete’s reach. “Come on, you’re a _grown man with basically a whole degree in a science subject_ —”

“ _Political_ science,” says Andy; a traitor.

“—and you’re telling me _you_ believe in love potions?”

“You provided a compelling argument,” says Pete weakly. He’s starting to feel very silly. “I was — is this covered by state law?”

“Selling… love potions?” The clerk raises an eyebrow and takes a long swallow of his Mountain Dew. “You want that governed by _state law_?”

“It has cough syrup and I don’t believe you’re a fully licensed pharmacist.”

“And you _love_ this idiot?” he asks Patrick. “Dude, I don’t even _know_ you and already I can tell you that you can do _so much_ better.”

Patrick, for his part, looks dazed, bewildered. It’s Valentine’s Day and Pete feels ridiculous. He should be romancing Patrick like a Richard Curtis movie; standing with flowers, chocolates, a boombox playing their song.

(They don’t have a song, Pete will worry about, obsess over, and rectify this later.)

“Everyone out,” Andy declares, shoving them all through the door and out into the parking lot where they gather, in the snow and weak, golden winter sunlight that filters through the skeletal bones of stripped bare trees. “Well…”

Patrick is blushing. Pete is embarrassed and hopping from foot to frozen foot like he can dig his own grave right here in the asphalt.

“So,” Joe’s eyes widen; his comprehension is both sudden and fierce, “Patrick is like, _actually_ in love with you? For real?”

“Oh _God_ ,” Patrick hisses into his hands. “ _Shut up_!”

“So, it _wasn’t_ weird voodoo sex?” Joe continues, blithe and unworried. “Those were like, love boners?”

“Affection erections,” Pete confirms. Because this is a wonderful thing. A magnificent, perfect, happily ever after ending. He snags a blushing Patrick around the waist, he picks him up like he weighs nothing at all and spins him, screaming curses that turn breathy against Pete’s throat. “Sentimental stiffies, passion poles, wood of woo, heart-ons. All of them for me.”

“You’re disgusting,” Andy informs him. Andy is _jealous_.

“Put me down, you absolute _dick_ , I do not consent to this!”

“You love me,” says Pete, grinning wide and toothy. Patrick's blush is sunrise over Lake Michigan. “You love me and you want me and this is the most awesome Valentine’s Day ever. Even better than when Katie Morgan gave me her “be mine” heart in second grade.”

“I _will_ break up with you,” Patrick threatens, but he doesn’t mean it and their mouths are so close Pete can taste his wintergreen gum and feel his warm, damp breath. He wants to kiss him, can’t kiss him here, first kisses are special. More special than bare dicks in bright bedrooms. Pete wants it to be memorable, worthy.

“You won’t,” he murmurs. Patrick is smiling so wide his mouth must hurt with it and they pile into the back of the van together while Joe and Andy station themselves up front. “You won’t because you love me and love potions are dumb.”

They lie on the tangle of unwashed sleeping bags and crushed potato chips and they smile endlessly at one another. Pete is goofy, he’s insane with adoration for this improbable combination of music and endless temper. He wants to promise him forever, the world, the band and future greatness, together, hand in hand, unwavering in his love. He wants to kiss him stupid. He wants to recreate that moment on the bed sheets but do everything right this time.

“So, I have some thoughts about our first date. And our second. I’ve been thinking about our wedding and I _might_ have a shortlist of twenty or so names for our kids. Not to freak you out or anything, but like, I always wanted a fall wedding and places will be booking up, so, we should probably get a move on—”

“Oh God, _stop,”_ Patrick laughs like he isn’t thinking exactly the same thing. He touches Pete’s chin, calluses catching on razor rash and murmurs, “Hey, Pete?”

Pete looks up.

Patrick kisses him.

It is

Perfect.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, and kudos are amazing! You can also come and say hi on tumblr [here!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sn1tchesandtalkers)
> 
> Don't forget to check out the other works and, from me to you, Happy Valentine's!


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